In general, snoring occurs when air is not able to easily pass through the throat due to narrowing of the throat before the air enters in the throat when a person breathes. Thus, snoring is a symptom indicating a breath difficulty during sleep. When one breathes, air passes through soft human body parts such as the palate, the uvula, the tonsils, and the tongue. During the day, surrounding muscles help these body parts maintain the original positions so that the passage of air is not blocked and no sound is generated. However, during sleep, these muscles are relaxed and sag, thereby narrowing a part of the air passage. Thus, when the air passes through the narrowed air passage, soft tissues are vibrated to make snoring sounds.
In extreme cases, the air passage can be temporarily blocked due to severe muscle relaxation during sleep or high obesity. At this time, air does not pass toward the lungs at all. This condition is known as an obstructive sleep apnea syndrome.
When such a condition is prolonged, since fresh air is not supplied to the lungs, the brain detects the lack of air and thus orders the body to be awakened and the muscles to contract to reopen the air passage. Then, the patient can take one deep breath and resume breathing. If this phenomenon repeatedly occurs every night, the patient does not get much sleep, and as a result feels tired and very sleepy during the day. This may cause mishaps such as car accidents. Also, when the phenomenon continues for a long time, a burden to the heart or lungs increases such that severe side effects such as high blood pressure, arrhythmia, and myocardial infraction may occur.
To treat the sleep apnea syndrome, a nasal cavity operation or a pharynx removal laser operation may be performed, or a snoring prevention pillow or mouthpiece device may be used.
First, although a nasal cavity operation and a pharynx removal laser operation can temporarily reduce snoring, the symptom improved after the operation may be degraded after a period of time has elapsed.
The snoring prevention pillow has a merit in that it does not need an operation. However, the pillow does not work properly because it frequently deviates from its original position during sleep.
The mouthpiece device is designed to prevent snoring by pulling a lower jaw forward by inserting the device between the teeth. The device pulls the lower jaw forward so that a gap between the palate and the uvula, the tongue root, and the tonsils connected to the palate is increased to widen the air passage in the throat. The widened air passage enables the intake air for breathing during sleep to freely pass through the throat while avoiding the uvula, the tongue root, and the tonsils. Thus, vibrations of the palate and the tonsils due to the passage of air are completely prevented in advance.
The device has become widely used recently because an additional operation is unnecessary and the throat is maintained in a wide state during sleep. Korean Patent Publication No. 10-2006-0089860 discloses a device related to the above-described mouthpiece device.
A mouthpiece device 100 has a shape of a mouthpiece and has a teeth biting plate 101 on each of the upper and lower surfaces thereof, on which upper teeth 50 and lower teeth 60 can be disposed. When the upper and lower teeth 50 and 60 are disposed on the teeth biting plate 101, the lower jaw is naturally pulled forward so that the throat can be widened.
However, the conventional snoring prevention device 100 described above is required to be held in the patient's mouth with the upper and lower teeth fixed thereto for several hours during sleep, and thus is uncomfortable for the patient. In particular, patients having such a device held in their mouths with the uncomfortable pose find it difficult to sleep well and thus feel tired and sleepy the next morning.